You ask, I provide. November 2nd, 1922. Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.

16 03 2008

Roger Carr recently wrote in comments:

HELP WANTED: I am trying to purchase (or plunder) a full copy of this story, mentioned here on this forum:

A Washington, D.C. resident John Lockwood was conducting research at the Library of Congress and came across an intriguing headline in the Nov. 2, 1922 edition of The Washington Post: Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.

The article mentions “great masses of ice have now been replaced by moraines of earth and stones,” and “at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared.”

The original source of the story resurfacing recently was from an Inside the Beltway column of August 14th, 2007. The newspaper article was located in the Library of Congress archives by James Lockwood.

Here is the text of the Washington Post (Associated Press) article:

The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.

UPDATE:

The source report of the Washington Post article on changes in the arctic has been found in the Monthly Weather Review for November 1922. It is much more detailed than the Washington Post (Associated Press) article. It seems the AP heaviliy relied on the report from Norway Consulate George Ifft, which is shown below. See the original MWR article below and click the newsprint copy for a complete artice or see the link to the original PDF below:

 changing-artic_monthly_wx_review_intro.png

Click the article to see the full article changing-arctic_monthly_wx_review.png.

The PDF of that page exists here from NOAA’s archives. Thanks to Michael Ronayne for locating it and many other resources you can find in the comments section below.

If Yogi Berra were here to comment on the hullabaloo over the changes in the arctic today, I’m pretty sure he’d say. “It’s Deja Vu all over again”.

;-)

UPDATE:  If you like the work being presented here and the work of my nationwide project at www.surfacestations.org you may want to consider taking a look at this entry to lend a hand.





I need a little help

16 03 2008

I’m often amazed at the reach this blog has been getting worldwide. Last month, I found it hitting almost a quarter million visits. This month it is on track to exceed 300,000. And you never know who will drop by. For example MIT’s Richard Lindzen dropped by a few days ago and offered some insight and a graph.

Along those lines I’ve recently been given an offer of a sit down visit with one of the principal organizations and investigators of climate science today. I won’t say who just yet, (except to say it is not Al Gore) but I can say that the offer is genuine and exciting.

It also comes with a price tag, since I have to fund the travel, hotel, etc. myself.

When I first set out to do the surfacestations.org project, I did so with no expectation of funding. I rather like it that way because I think that when you are handed a wad of cash with the expectation of producing a result in exchange, sometimes the pressure of doing so can be a detriment to true curiosity and discovery. I once worked in a University environment, and I saw the pressure to produce.

But this visit I’ve been offered is going to take a bit of cash to do, and rather than beg supporters I have what I hope will be a better idea. I don’t like begging, but I do like providing useful things for meteorology.

So here’s my pitch. I have a weather radar program for the USA NEXRAD network, and a darn good one at that. It’s called StormPredator. Knowing that I have many people that frequent this blog who enjoy meteorology and severe weather tracking, I’m hoping those of you that like the work that I do will consider buying it to help fund my trip. You get something, I get something, we both win. Plus I’ll have one heck of a blog report when I get back from this meeting.

My idea for Stormpredator came from my working with old WSR-3, WSR-57, and WSR-74 weather radars with round PPI scopes. I wanted to create a weather radar program that anyone could use, not just a “met head”. I wanted a weather program that would be useful, educational, and fun at the same time.

It looks like this:

Besides round PPI mode, it also can be setup in a rectangular presentation. It has 3D topography for the entire USA, and can track and animate storms, do popup and email alerts, provide ETA estimates, forecasts, satellite imagery, and even send pictures to your website or cell phone. It’s loaded.

It is used by storm trackers, 911 centers, dispatch centers, TV stations, radio stations, schools, amateur radio operators, and just regular folks that like to track storms.

It has a boatload of features. Check them out here.

There is no subscription fee for the radar or other weather data, and the program will operate using any type of Internet connection. It is also inexpensive for what it does, at $39.99. (or $10 more for a CD ROM version).

If watching the weather interests you, I hope you’ll consider buying a copy to help me fund my trip. Thank you for your consideration.

If you don’t live in the USA, and can’t use the program above for that or any other reason, but would like to help out, I have provided a donation page via PayPal on the surfacestations.org website.





Poll: majority of British say they are being snookered

16 03 2008

The London Times conducted a broad poll. In it was an interesting question:

The government is imposing ‘green taxes’ as an excuse to raise money rather than to help save the environment

The answer was quite telling:

times_poll_greentaxes.png